Traditionally, the 2,500 feet per minute maximum mean piston speed, equivalent to 12.7 meters per second, has been used by Road & Track to establish the maximum cruising speed of an automobile in the Maserati GT heyday of the Fifties and Sixties, as the stress level that the average engine will tolerate for prolonged running. Needless to say, this number is only a heuristic average, and specific engines may well thrive on much higher speeds, or expire well below that limit. Also, owing to the geometrical fact that, for any given mean piston speed, the rate of piston acceleration is usually lower in the long-stroke design, long-stroke undersquare engines such as the Maserati I-6 tend to accept higher piston speeds than those designed with an oversquare bore to stroke ratio of a Maserati V-8. Continue reading maserati: revving up mistrals and boras

Russian people do not owe anything to anyone. On the contrary, everyone owes them for the evil that they could have caused to the world — and can cause even now, — but refrained from causing. And even if they did cause evil, as in Chernobyl, it was not out of malice, but due to their primitive technology. Who defended Europe from Genghis Khan and Batu Khan at the cost of a bicentenary yoke? who saved her from Tamerlane, by a timely transfer of Our Lady of Vladimir to Moscow? who cut Napoleon down to size? who stopped the barrels of Hitler’s guns with their flesh? Or have you forgotten? But you should remember, you should help Russian people recover from their tribulations, you should surfeit them with sausage, canned meat, cereals, potatoes, bread, cabbage, yoghurt, pollack, baby formula, tobacco, vodka, snacks, sneakers, denim, sporting goods, medicine, cotton. And fabulously cheap used cars. And chewing gum.
But nobody likes us, except for the Jews, who, even upon finding themselves secure in the land of their ancestors, continue to suffer from unrequited love for Russia. This love, devoted unto moans and murmurs, be it womanish or slavish, was the only thing that annoyed me in Israel.
—Yuri Nagibin, Darkness at the End of the Tunnel, 19, translated by MZ